description

Comprehensive overview of Vienna Actionists Günter Brus, Otto Mühl, Hermann Nitsch and Rudolf Schwarzkogler. Edited by Eva Badura-Triska, Hubert Klocker. Text by Eva Badura-Triska, Kerstin Barnick-Braun, Rosemarie Brucher, Thomas Eder, Marie-Therese Hochwartner. Includes 1,400 color images, biographies and an illustrated chronology and index of all the “actions,” literature and films. "Brus, Mühl, Nitsch and Schwarzkogler shared a similar reaction to the restrictive political and cultural climate of the Austrian art scene of the 1950s and 1960s. Others, such as Kurt Kren, Ernst Schmidt Jr., Valie Export and Peter Weibel, used the medium of video and film to critique the repressive aspects of language and mass media, and the Wiener Gruppe (Friedrich Achleitner, Konrad Bayer, Gerhard Rühm, Oswald Wiener) saw language as a visual and acoustic material, and transformed it into collages, happenings and 'literary cabarets.'" -- from publisher's statement. Text in English.